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 Dear
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We welcome all of our visitors who join us for this,
our First Communion Weekend. We are so proud of each of our
children who are receiving the Blessed Sacrament for the first
time this weekend at a special Mass on Saturday afternoon. Our
First Communicants remind all of us of just what an awesome gift
the Eucharist really is. We should all go to Communion every
Sunday with as much love and respect as our children had
yesterday afternoon at their First Holy Communion. We pray for
our children this weekend that they will always keep that love
and devotion throughout their lifetimes.
You don’t have to look around our culture and our
society today too long to realize that we have really become a
divided nation. This goes way beyond “red states” and “blue
states” from the election of 2000. Our divisions in this
country today are bigger than Democrat or Republican, liberal or
conservative, Fox News or NBC News. Somewhere along the line, I
fear, that we have really stopped listening to others, most
especially others that are different from us. And when we stop
listening, we also stop working together for the good of all.
Ultimately, aren’t we all different in one way or another? God
did not make us clones of each other. And how boring it would
be if He had! Our differences should make our lives more
interesting to each other, and should not become walls that keep
us apart. This certainly flies smack in the face of St. Paul’s
idea from his Epistles that we are all different parts of the
same body, and that we don’t have to be the same, but that we do
have to work together to keep the body alive and functioning.
Unfortunately, this is not only creating a crisis in our
national politics and consciousness, but our divisiveness and
unwillingness to really listen to others is also trickling down
to cause problems in our families, our marriages, and even our
Church. We’re not listening. We’re not giving one another the
benefit of the doubt. We judge, and classify, and file, and
box-up everybody and everything that everybody says and does.
And when it doesn’t mesh with our own words, ideas, and actions,
we toss out whatever we don’t want to hear. We quit listening
to one another. Is it possible that when we quit listening to
each other, even voices that are very different from our own,
are we also not giving God a chance to speak to us through these
other people?
I have been praying about this a lot lately. This
letter this week is my feeble attempt to try and get all of us
thinking and talking about this. It just seems to me that in
this “age of information” that we should be better listeners.
Are we really hearing one another? Do we keep giving one
another new opportunities to communicate or have we stopped
listening a long, long time ago?
Nowhere have we seen more devastation from this
crisis than in marriages! A husband and wife must listen to
each other. They can’t just hear words. They can’t just hear
with their ears. They must speak to each other’s hearts. Young
couples falling in love spend hours listening to each other’s
hearts when they are building their relationships. When does
that stop? Why does that stop? How can a married couple think
that they are going to stay married and NOT spend some serious
time listening to each other’s hearts? Even in marriage, we
assume, we judge, and our pre-conceived notions are killing
marriages right in our midst! And it’s not just in marriages
either. It’s parents with their relationships with their
children and vice versa. It’s messing up friendships between
old friends and new friends. It’ll destroy a community or a
Parish, or a Church if we let it. We must really listen to each
other. And sometimes we have to listen beyond the surface of
what we’re hearing, and not be afraid to find out more. I know
that we can turn this around. It’s just going to take a lot of
effort on the part of all of us to do it. Pray about this.
Talk about this crisis this week with your spouse, your friends,
your kids, and other folks that you trust. It’s a beginning.
We have our final BIG Sacramental celebration coming
up on Monday evening, May 21st,
when Bishop Higi will be here to administer the Sacrament of
Confirmation to our young people. The only Mass that day will
be the 7:00 PM Confirmation Mass in the main Sanctuary.
Have a great week!
In Christ,
Fr. Kevin
The Gospel is neither a discussion or a debate. It is an
announcement.
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